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I’m old enough to remember a television series called “Love, American Style.” In case you aren’t old enough to remember it, it was a show that aired on ABC from 1969 to 1974. Each episode featured multiple stories of romantic comedy.
The series gave the impression that everyone was looking for love, even if they went about it the wrong way. As we sometimes say about love, “It’s complicated.” I’m not sure there is a clear-cut American style of love, but there is a Catholic style of faith, which, like love, is also “complicated.”
Even if it is complicated, however, we would all like a little more of it. In our Gospel lesson, the apostles feel the same way. They say to Jesus, “Increase our faith,” and then Jesus does his best to encourage them in their state of faith by saying that even a tiny bit of faith can accomplish amazing things.
In this passage he says that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, which isn’t very big, we can command a mulberry tree to uproot itself and plant itself in the sea, and it would obey. Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but we get what Jesus is trying to say: A little bit of faith can go a long way, just as a little bit of love can be very powerful.
By the way, Jesus loves a good exaggerated image to express his belief that a tiny seed of faith can do great things. In Matthew and Mark’s gospel he claims that our faith can move mountains into the sea, which sounds far more difficult than a mulberry tree.
The way Jesus talks about faith, maybe it isn’t that complicated after all. Maybe we overthink it. Maybe it is always enough.
Even so, when most of us reflect on our faith, we convince ourselves that we want more of it. And as good Catholics, we convince ourselves that we want more faith . . . Catholic style. But what does that even mean?
What does it mean for Catholics to increase, grow, boost, and expand our faith? Although, according to Jesus, we don’t need much to do great things, I believe it is, like love, complicated.
One reason Faith, Catholic style, is complicated, is because we have been taught not to treat it as something that occurs without time and effort. We don’t believe we can just wake up in the morning, say some magic words, and then, “presto!” we have all the faith we will ever want or need.
From a Catholic perspective, increasing our faith is a lifelong journey rooted in God’s grace. Obviously, we need to have a little divine assistance along the way. Without that complicated concept called “grace,” our faith is empty.
It becomes an empty slogan. It has no substance. We can utter the word “faith” with our lips, claiming to have enough to move mountains and mulberry trees, but faith without God’s grace is like a mountain with no earth or a tree with no roots.
That’s what God does; and then there’s what we do.
Faith, Catholic style, only increases through our determinedusage. If the following isn’t part of our lives, then faith is just a five-letter word in our vocabulary: We should spend our livesexercising our faith through prayer, strengthening our faith through the Mass, renewing our faith through confession and penance, learning about our faith through scripture and religious instruction, fleshing out our faith through works of mercy, exhibiting our faith through moral and virtuous living, testing our faith through trials and tribulations, talking about our faith to our neighbors, and yes, asking Jesus to increase our faith. It never hurts to ask.
This is Faith, Catholic Style. Is it complicated? Sure. Will it get us our own television show? Probably not.
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